Mapping of the rice genome could help ease world hunger

PHILIP BRASHERAP Farm Writer

Published Saturday, January 27, 2001

WASHINGTON -- Scientists have decoded the genetic blueprint of rice, a staple for half the world's population, in a breakthrough that could lead to hardier varieties and ease malnutrition, researchers said Friday. It also could speed research on more complex grains such as corn and wheat.

Rice is the first plant important to agriculture to have its genome mapped. Its genetic model is relatively simple, but it is so similar to other grains that scientists can use the rice map to locate genes in those crops.

That would make it easier to add nutrients to crops or make them more resistant to drought and pests through both conventional breeding techniques and genetic engineering.

''Identifying not only the genes, but their functions and how they work, will provide researchers with crucial new knowledge to improve food crops,'' said Steve Briggs, president of the Torrey Mesa Research Institute, a subsidiary of Switzerland-based Syngenta.

The project was a joint effort of Syngenta and Myriad Genetics Inc. of Salt Lake City, Utah.

The biotech companies are finishing ahead of an international rice-genome project, based in Japan, that is using different mapping techniques and research donated by Syngenta rival Monsanto Co. The two projects have followed similar tracks to rival public and private efforts to decode the human genome.

The international rice project, to be finished in 2003, is supposed to be more accurate and complete.

Syngenta's project may raise questions about corporate control of genetic material, particularly since it involves a crop that is vital to many poor nations.

The two companies said they will make the rice data available to other researchers through research contracts. Syngenta said it also would work with research institutes in poor countries to help subsistence farmers.

The company's policy is to provide data, such as the genetic code for rice, without royalties or fees when it is used for research benefiting poor farmers.

''If Syngenta fulfills that policy, poor farmers may reap substantial benefits,'' said Per Pinstrup-Andersen, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute.

He cautioned, however, that ''it will take many years of scientific study before these advances reach the fields of small-scale farmers. The sooner these efforts are under way, the better.''

Data from the international project will be freely available to scientists worldwide.

Rice is a relatively poor source of many essential nutrients, but scientists are developing varieties enhanced with vitamin A to prevent blindness in Asian children.

Hardier varieties also are needed. Rice production has doubled in the last 30 years but is no longer expanding enough to keep pace with many countries' growth in population.

Last year, scientists completed the mapping of another plant, arabidopsis, but the rice genome is more similar to other grasses, including wheat, corn, barley, that together with rice are the world's main sources of food and animal feed.

Rice plants have 12 chromosomes containing about 50,000 different genes, which in turn comprise about 430 million base pairs of DNA.

The wheat genome is 37 times larger, but recent research has found that grass genomes have similar genetic maps over large blocks of the chromosomes. A wheat breeder could use the rice map to find a similar gene in wheat to make that crop resistant to fungus, a major pest to farmers, said Benjamin Burr, a plant geneticist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.

''Rice is the model for the other grasses, including corn and wheat, as well as being extremely important in itself,'' said Burr, who is working on the international rice-genome project.